The present invention relates in general to a technology for protecting literary works such as the contents by utilizing the licences. More particularly, the invention relates to means and a system for providing the copyright protection function on the basis of the licence for an information processing system which does not have the copyright protection function and for managing the literary works such as the licences and the contents which are stored in general apparatuses which are electrically connected to the system.
There has been proposed the service in which the contents such as motion pictures or the musics are distributively transmitted by the communication means such as the internet or the satellite broadcasting. Since the information of the contents (the contents data) which are handled in such a distributive transmission system is digitized and hence is easy to be duplicated, it is important to protect the copyright relating to the contents. As for the means for protecting the copyright, there has been proposed a method wherein the contents data is encrypted to be distributively transmitted. More specifically, the contents data is encrypted by the public key cipher system or the like, and at the same time, the key which is used to decode the contents data thus encrypted is generated. Since if there is not the key corresponding to the contents data thus encrypted, the encrypted contents data can not be reproduced, this key is managed as the licence, whereby the unfair use of the contents can be prevented, and also the right of the contents which an author has can be protected. The technique for encrypting such contents data to transmit distributively the encrypted contents data, for example, is disclosed in JP-A-2000-138664.
In the service of transmitting distributively the contents based on the copyright protection technique as described above, the method of distributing safely the licence of the contents become important.
As for the method of distributing safely the licence, there has been proposed a method of giving a communication terminal the licence only while the communication terminal is being electrically connected to a licence giving apparatus. Such a technique, for example, is disclosed in JP-A-11-203249.